She felt herself going dizzy; the floor was rising and the ceiling falling.
‘We haven’t located the body yet. It’s been snowing and the search area is vast and extremely rugged. Can you hear me?’
‘Y–yes, I can.’
The policeman’s voice, a touch hoarse, continued. ‘When the body has been recovered, we’ll try to get it identified as soon as possible. But there may be extensive burns. Therefore we require DNA now from anyone who might conceivably be the deceased person. And while Tony is a missing person . . .’
Lene’s heart felt as if it was coming up her throat, ready to leap out of her mouth. The voice at the other end droned on.
‘That is why I was wondering if you could help one of our forensics officers to find DNA material in Tony’s home.’
‘S-such as what?’
‘A hair from a brush, saliva on a toothbrush, they know what they need. The important thing is that you, as his fiancée, give us permission and come to his house with a key.’
‘Of c-course.’
‘Thank you very much indeed. I’ll send an officer to Holmenveien right away.’
Lene rang off. Felt the tears coming. Put her iPod earphones back in.
Caught Tracy Chapman singing about taking a fast car and keeping on driving. Then the song finished. She pressed repeat.
65
Kadok
NYDALEN EMBODIED THE DEINDUSTRIALISATION OF OSLO. The factory buildings that had not been demolished – and had not given way to gleaming, elegant designer office blocks in glass and steel – had been converted into TV studios, restaurants and large, open-plan redbrick affairs with exposed ventilation and plumbing.
The latter were often rented by advertising firms who wanted to flag up that they thought in untraditional ways, that creativity flourished just as well in cheap industrial rooms as in the expensive and centrally located head offices of their well-established competitors. But the premises in Nydalen now cost at least as much because all advertising agencies basically think in traditional patterns. That is: they follow the fashion and drive the prices upwards for whatever is the fashion.
The owners of the disused Kadok factory site had, however, not participated in this bonanza. When the factory had finally closed fourteen years ago, after several annual deficits and the dumping of PSG in China, the founder’s heirs went for each other’s throats. And while they were arguing about who should have what, the factory fell into decay, isolated behind the fences to the west of the River Akerselva. Shrubs and deciduous trees were allowed to grow wild and eventually masked the factory from its surroundings. Bearing all this in mind, Harry thought the large padlock on the gate seemed strangely new.
‘Cut it,’ Harry told the officer beside him.
The jaws of the enormous bolt cutter went through the metal as if it were butter, and the lock was snapped as quickly as it had taken Harry to get a blue chit. The solicitor at Kripos had sounded as if he had more important things to do than issue search warrants, and Harry had barely finished talking before he had the chit filled and signed in his hand. And he had thought to himself that they could do with a couple of stressedout, negligent solicitors at Crime Squad as well.
The low afternoon sun flashed on the jagged glass of smashed windows high in the brick walls. The atmosphere was marked by the desolation you find only in disused factories where everything you see has been constructed for hectic, efficient activity, yet there is no one around. Where the echo of iron on iron, of workers shouting, cursing and laughing over the drone of the machines still reverberates silently between the walls, and the wind blows through the soot-darkened, broken windows, making the spiders’ webs and the dead shells of insects quiver.
There was no lock on the door into the factory hall. The five men walked through a rectangular area with church-like acoustics, which gave the impression of an evacuation rather than closure; work tools were still laid out, a pallet loaded with white buckets labelled PSG TYPE 3 stood ready to be driven away, a blue coat hung over the back of a chair.
They stopped when they reached the centre of the hall. In one corner there was a kind of kiosk, shaped like a lighthouse and raised a metre off the ground. Foreman’s office, Harry thought. Around the walls ran a gallery, which at one end led into a mezzanine floor with its own rooms. Harry guessed they were the lunch room and admin offices.
‘Where shall we begin?’ Harry asked.
‘The same place as always,’ Bjørn Holm said, casting round. ‘Top lefthand corner.’
‘What are we looking for?’
‘A table, a bench with blue PSG on it. The stains on the trousers were rubbed in slightly below the back pockets, so she must have been sitting on something – in other words, she wasn’t lying flat.’